As the everyday use of AI has exploded in recent years, so have the energy demands of the computing infrastructure that supports it. But the environmental toll of these large data centers, which suck up gigawatts of power and require vast amounts of water for cooling, has been too diffuse and difficult to quantify.
  • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    2 months ago

    But the environmental toll of these large data centers, which suck up gigawatts of power and require vast amounts of water for cooling, has been too diffuse and difficult to quantify.

    Too diffuse to quantify? How so? The AI industry is very consolidated.

    The team found that, by 2030, the current rate of AI growth would annually put 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere

    Weirdly enough, it’s smaller than I was expecting. But this is just a single paper.

    Well, let’s look at some stats for context.

    The US generated 15.048 trillion kJ of electricity and 1.53 billion tons of CO2 for that electricity in 2024. That’s about 0.10167 kg of CO2 per kJ of electricity on average.

    If AI datacenters have the US average of carbon intensity in 2024, then the paper basically says that they will use 432.75 billion kJ of electricity. Or 120.21 GWh. That’s the upper end estimate.